Wait! Don’t Dig -- Call 811 First

With spring upon us, homeowners and builders are beginning outdoor digging projects. You can help improve the customer experience and protect our network by calling 811 before you dig to ensure buried utility lines are marked.

811 is the national call-before-you-dig number, which must be called before every digging project, from simple landscaping projects like planting trees or shrubs to building a deck or installing a mailbox.

About 165,000 underground utilities are damaged annually across the U.S., and one out of every three incidents results from not calling 811. Be sure to call 811 before you dig, and educate a friend or neighbor about the importance of calling 811 if they have digging projects.

Here’s how it works:

Place one free, simple call to 811 to inform your local one-call center of your intent to dig.

Call as early as possible prior to digging to ensure enough time for utility lines to be properly marked.

When you call 811, a representative will ask for the location and description of your digging project.

Your local one-call center will notify affected utility companies, who will send a professional locator to mark the approximate location of your lines.

Once lines have been properly marked, carefully dig around the marked areas.

The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) and its 1,400 members, including Verizon, recognize April as National Safe Digging Month, which was designated to promote awareness of 811 and that our land has a complex underground infrastructure of pipelines, wires and cables. Striking an underground utility line can create a safety hazard, disrupt service to an entire neighborhood, and result in fines and repair costs.

Verizon promotes safe digging by distributing hats, gloves and other promotional items with the 811 logo to our outside plant personnel, excavators, locators, municipal employees and right-of-way providers. We also place 811 bumper stickers on our vehicles to educate the public.

I am the only one that knows where my cable is buried. After repeated calls, the temporary cable placed on the ground was attempted to be replace with one only 2" deep below the grass before I chased off the cut rate contractors., So with no response from any contracts manager in charge of the contractors, I buried the temporary cable myself about 18" deep. Deeper than the CATV to my house which my son managed to cut. The utilities marking contractor failed to mark the CATV cable prior to the FiOS contractor coming out.. I never want CATV again anyway. Err. 2005 I was the first in my neighborhood, so all others were six months later, after VZ figured out how to run branch lines, and better burry the cable. So I was not totally ignored, once they saw problems. So I keep an eye out and also an orange can of paint where I can mark my cable when I see lines on the grass outside of my yard. Can I get one of those hats for my trouble? I ware a large size. I have a big head!

Not my fiber. The one they used back then, I think may have been rev .01, or an Arial cable. It did not have the wire in it. The one the cut rate contractors tried to burry just under the sod, did have an insulated wire you could see parallel to the fiber jacket. So mine is never detected. I do have a branch line box in my front yard if it ever needs to be run again. It is about 25 ft from my other utility service entrance, and feeds other neighbors. I watched them put the plastic in the ground from the big box where mine is connected. Plus I know there is no ground on the fiber cable end inside my house at the ONT. The ONT is grounded though. Perhaps we are a very old install or I just missed something. I know I watched the original techs cut the cable and do the fiber splice on my dryer in the laundry room. The head for the cable would not fit through the 3/4 electrical PVC conduit I had run for them through my floor joists to the back of the house. Plus it was over 100 deg f. that hot day in August 2005 and they loved to work inside with the 24" x 24" piece of AC plywood on my wall. Nice mounting surface. I offered iced tea, or something to drink, but they declined. Soda, cold bear. They said no. There were two of them. Once said go get the splice kit, the other said why. The responce was, we get to work inside on this one.

SO NO IT IS NEVER MARKED. I have marked it at least 5 times. I know my cable was about 100ft before they cut it because my ONT is about 80ft from the main trunk line where my fiber tap is connected. As stated, everyone else is on a branch tap. Lucky me.

Well that is really strange. My fiber was buried in the summer of 2005, I know it has a copper wire in it because last spring (2011) I watched a Verizon tech verify which vault it was connected to when he was replacing my ONT, he thought it went in one direction across the street and I knew it went to the corner of my lot in the opposite direction. So to verify, he hooked up the signal generator and traced maybe 50' and then he believed what I was telling him.

But yes, mine also is buried very shallow, pretty much follows the same route my now unused POTS cable is buried. But I know that the FiOS fiber is the ony thing buried there, all of my other service, electric, gas, and water, comes in from the other side of the house.

Manager - Media Relations

Bob stays on top of developments and issues with Verizon’s Consumer and Mass Business segment from his home base in Florida. He has been involved with FiOS since it was first being developed and deployed in 2004.

Manager -- Media Relations

Phil has been extolling the virtues of FiOS ever since he had his Triple Play installed and can’t image how he ever managed without it. He writes about developing technologies that enable him to fuel his addiction to movies and sports whenever he wants, no matter where he is.

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